Four

4

WINTER

Got her, Boss.

I don’t pause to think what those words could mean. My first and most important role in life is survival. I’m not living for

myself. I’m living on behalf of my baby girl. For the life she couldn’t have.

The man who’s captured me is bulky and as big as a mountain. His expression is stern, harsh, like he was born with a permanent scowl. His hair is short, white-blond, and his light eyes are as cold and merciless as ice.

As soon as he puts me on my feet, I wiggle to slip out of the hold he has on my hood. Twisting and squirming, I grab his hand and try to yank it away, but I might as well be a mouse fighting a cat.

He appears utterly uninterested as he pulls me along, my struggle not deterring him at all. I step on his foot, but he merely grasps my hood tighter as he continues to take me away. My feet drag on the floor and I lose one of my shoes.

“Help!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Help—” The man places a stone-like hand on my mouth, cutting off any sound I can make.

Unlike the stench of my rotten gloves, his hand smells of leather and metal. Despite the somewhat tolerable odor, it’s still stifling as if I’m being stuffed in a small place where I don’t fit.

My limbs shake at that prospect. I attempt to wrench my mind from it, but it’s already grown and expanded, tearing through flesh and bones to materialize in front of me.

I’m in a closed space, it’s so dark, so very dark that I can’t see my own hands. The odor of urine fills my nostrils and my own breaths sound like

the red-eyed monster from my most terrifying nightmares.

I’m trapped.

I can’t get out.

“Let me out…” I whisper with hoarse desperation. “Please let me out…”

“Where is the little monster?”

No!

I scratch at the hand holding me, at the one who will kill me. I won’t let them.

I have to live.

Before I know it, I’m shoved into the back of the black car. I must’ve been so caught up in that moment from the past that I didn’t pay attention to the distance he’d dragged me. Bulky Blond releases me and slams the door shut.

My fingers are shaking, and the remnants of the flashback of that dark, tight space still beats under my skin like a demon about to rear its ugly head. Usually, after such episodes, I run into an open space and keep running and running until the air burns my lungs and erases the image.

Not now, though.

Now, I need to force my body to be on a high so I can survive. Survival comes before everything. Before pain. Before mental prisons. Everything.

I attempt to open the door before Bulky Blond can get in the driver’s seat and take me to God knows where.

But he doesn’t climb into the car.

Instead, he stands in front of it with his back to me. Another man joins him and when he turns to the side, I catch a passing glimpse of his profile. He’s shorter in size and appears younger than Bulky Blond. His physique is also on the leaner side and his suit jacket doesn’t cling to his shoulders like that of the larger man. He has long brown hair that’s gathered in a low bun and a crooked nose that I’m sure I’ve seen before, but where?

The moment of hesitation vanishes when Crooked Nose and Bulky Blond both face away from me.

I tug on the handle, but the door doesn’t open. “Shit.”

Jamming my sock-covered foot against it, I push, then pull until heat rises up my cheeks. I click the button to lower the glass, but it’s also locked.

“It’s useless. Save your effort.”

I flinch, my movements coming to a screeching halt. In my adrenaline- induced haze, I failed to notice that someone else was in the back seat with me.

Still gripping the handle, I slowly turn my head, hoping to hell that what I just heard was a play of my imagination.

That I’ve thought about him for so long, I’ve started hallucinating. I’m not.

My lips part as I’m wrenched into those intense gray eyes from this afternoon. They appear darker, more shadowed, as if the night has cast a spell on them.

I cut off eye contact as soon as I make it, because if I keep staring, my skin will crawl, my head will get dizzy, and I’ll feel like vomiting my empty stomach out.

Using my foot on the door, I pull and push on the handle with all my might. At first, I thought the bulky man could be with the police and that he’s picking me up for killing Richard, but there’s no way this Russian stranger is a cop.

He doesn’t look like one.

Maybe he’s a spy, after all. This seems oddly similar to the beginning of some spy movie about an underdog—me—who will be recruited to work in secret for an intelligence agency.

When all the pushing and pulling doesn’t bring me any results, I jam my elbow into the glass. A zing of pain shoots through my whole arm, but I won’t stop, not until I’m out of this place.

It’s starting to feel like that damn closed box. I need out.

I’m about to punch the glass with my fist, when the stranger’s voice fills the air, “It’s bulletproof, so you’ll only hurt yourself.”

My arm lies limp beside me. I might be willing to sacrifice pain, but I won’t do it for no result.

“Are you done?” he asks in that calm, almost serene tone—just like royalty. His voice is velvety, smooth as silk, but still deep and masculine.

I don’t look at him and, instead, lunge to the front seat. If I can open the door or go out the window, I’ll run and—

Strong hands grip me by the hips and yank me back with effortless ease.

I’m now so close to him that his thigh touches mine.

I expect him to let me go now that he has me by his side, but he doesn’t. If anything, his hold tightens on my hips, and even though I’m wearing

multiple layers of clothes, I can feel the controlling warmth in his hands. It’s different from the heat in the car. This is burning, tearing holes through my clothes and aiming at my skin.

This close, I can smell him—or more like, I’m forced to inhale him with every drag of air. His scent is a mixture of leather and wood. Power and mysteriousness.

He speaks against my ear, his tone dropping in range with the purpose of cementing the words in my bones, “It’s useless to fight me, for you’ll only get hurt. You’re not at my level, so do not cause me trouble or I won’t hesitate to throw you to the wolves. I’m giving you my hand, so be grateful, thank your lucky stars, and take it without asking any fucking questions.”

My lips have been dry the entire time he’s been talking. He’s issuing clear threats, but he sounds like a calm lawyer presenting a case in front of a judge.

He has a particular way of speaking. His words are deliberate, sure, and have a commanding edge, without being too much in your face.

“What do you want from me?” I want to kick myself for the small voice. I almost sound scared. Scratch that. I definitely sound scared, because holy shit, I am. I just met this man today, and in the span of a few hours, my life has flipped upside down.

Up until now, my only purpose has been to live, but even that sounds impossible at the moment.

“I have an offer for you, Winter.”

How do you know my name? I want to ask that, but it’d be useless. He seems like the type of man who knows everything he needs to.

“What offer?”

His lips graze the shell of my ear as he murmurs, “Be my wife.”